Getting IT Service Management Right – 5 Key Building Blocks

The Gratz Bank

Timely and reliable ITSM is critical for most organizations, but especially for those in the banking and financial industry. Systems need to run smoothly and securely, and any downtime or security issues can be very costly. To meet these challenges, IT staff need comprehensive visibility into technology operations, as well as sound change management processes.

The team at The Gratz Bank was initially outsourcing IT services to a third-party provider, but they weren’t getting the visibility they needed to plan effectively.

“We wanted to own these processes ourselves,” said Mark Yerger, Chief Technology Officer (CTO).

TeamDynamix was flexible enough for their needs and had a good price point, according to Yerger.

Now, The Gratz Bank is using TeamDynamix to automate and streamline workflows for delivering IT service, managing projects and change requests, and tracking technology assets. In addition, they’ve expanded the use of TeamDynamix outside of IT – utilizing the platform as a true ESM tool.

“TeamDynamix has allowed us to take ownership of IT service management and create a foundation that we can expand on as our organization grows,” Yerger said.

To read more about The Gratz Bank’s success using TeamDynamix for ESM, check out: The Gratz Bank Takes Ownership of IT Service Management with Simplified Workflows and Better Visibility into IT Operations

Covenant Healthcare

The team at Covenant Healthcare knew they needed a better way to manage tickets and projects in IT as the needs of employees, doctors, nurses and patients continued to evolve and grow. That’s why they picked TeamDynamix.

Frank Fear, CIO at Covenant, recognized a change was needed as the tech expectations within healthcare started to shift, “Our patients expect technology. They expect certain things like virtual visits, they expect to be able to message their providers and they expect to be able to schedule an appointment online and not have to call a provider to make that appointment.”

And it’s not just the patients who expect technology.

“IT kind of moved from being something that helped the back-office employees, to something that’s involved in everyone’s job all the time,” Raymond Hall, Technology Manager at Covenant Health, said. “In healthcare, they need quick, fast access – like they’re running a kiosk or at a checkout line – but the amount of data, and the sophistication of the data, they need is the equivalent of someone sitting down to do a research paper. They’re asking to see a patient’s chart and an x-ray and all of this information, and they want to be able to get to that workstation and see it like that.”

For Fear, he needs the same level of data and sophistication but instead of patient information, he’s looking at the inner workings of the entire IT organization and all of the projects, tickets and requests that come in and out to support the network.

“I have my own CIO dashboard and in one look I can see any negative survey that’s come in the last 24 hours, then pivot over and look at any project that has a status of red that needs my attention, then pivot over and look at what’s going live in the next 30 days, then pivot over and see what critical tickets have come in from the help desk that maybe affect our entire organization,” Fear said. “That’s the wow. I think it’s the pieces coming together in a single pane for me, as a leader, to be able to manage and support our organization.”

Another “wow” for Fear is that they don’t need a dedicated full-time employee to manage and maintain the TeamDynamix platform, “TeamDynamix, we felt, had all of the advanced functionality the other products had but didn’t require the need for a full FTE to manage and support the product,” he said.

To read more about Covenant Healthcare check out: Covenant HealthCare: ITSM & Projects Together for a ‘Single Pain of Glass’

Oklahoma City

In Oklahoma City, Business Systems Manager Dusty Borchardt credits well-defined processes and a solid ITSM for the city’s success in the modernization of the IT Service Desk.

“The feedback we’ve gotten is that everyone loves TeamDynamix,” Borchardt said. “This is the first IT Service Management platform we’ve implemented that everyone loves to use.”

With about 100 people providing IT services for more than 5,000 city employees, the IT department needs to work efficiently. TeamDynamix has allowed them to do so by streamlining the delivery of IT service through automated workflows. 

“TeamDynamix has brought simplicity to our operations,” Borchardt said.

Using tools within the platform, Oklahoma City IT staff have created a self-service portal linked to an expanding knowledge base. City employees can find answers to common problems and frequently asked questions within the knowledge base, and if they can’t resolve their own issues, they can submit a service request through the portal. Based on the nature of the problem they describe; their request is routed automatically to the appropriate IT team for a response. 

“Our goal is that use of the self-service portal will continue to grow, reducing our call volume and emails to the IT service desk,” Borchardt says.

Automated workflows also ensure that important tasks aren’t overlooked when IT staff are busy. For instance, when new city employees are hired, there are many steps in the onboarding process. With TeamDynamix, the entire workflow can be initiated with a single service request that is routed to the various departments automatically. The same is true for requesting purchases and managing IT contracts.

In addition to automation and a self-service portal, Borchardt and his team have benefited by gaining deeper insight into IT operations through reporting. Using dashboards and reports, IT leaders can identify trends and patterns that help them make more informed decisions. For example, they can see how much time a task is taking, or which service categories are getting the most requests and allocate their limited resources more effectively.

Using TeamDynamix has helped Oklahoma City’s IT support teams realize their vision for using industry best practices to improve the delivery of IT services.

“We adopted the ITIL framework more than 15 years ago and had effective processes in place for a while, but we haven’t had a decent toolset to manage them until now,” Borchardt said. “TeamDynamix works better than any system we’ve had previously.”

To read more about Oklahoma City check out: Oklahoma City Shows Their Love for ITSM Platform; Adoption High

This post was originally published in February 2021 and has been updated with new information.